Oga giles, We can see the number only half way up, yes it could be F89 or F90 (you can even notice it here in my write-up). But when you compare the configurations of both ships you will see that this is definetly NNS Aradu. Moreover, as at 7th of December, NNS Thunder was somewhere off the coast of Anngola on her way back from the Centenary anniversary of the Royal Australian Navy.

Oga Blackrev, recently the CNS mentioned that the NNS Aradu and some other ships will undergo refit in the next 12 months as part of the medium term goals of the navy http://shippingposition.com.ng/article/piracy-navy-acquire-more-boats-2014 . Some other ships are already undergoing refit as we speak, but we don’t know what has been done so far on NNS Aradu. I don’t think this picture can answer that question either too.

It is safe to say that NNS Aradu is still in her usual berth position and not undergone any refit, which will be a major exercise as she has been inactive a long time and her systems need a major overhaul/replacement. She will need to go into dry dock.

NNS is the official flagship as far as I am aware, although NNS Thunder may have taken over that mantle as she is operational at the moment.

That is definately the aradu F-89,the aradu is fitted with AA and missiles as is clarely visible on the pic above and the NNS thunder F-90 has only the 76mm cannon fitted as main armarment with no missiles whatsoever,so the ship in the pic is definately the nns aradu(F-89) nigerias flagship.

Oga Oje, it appears as if you love to make categorical assertions even when they are unfounded. How do you know that and what is it premised on? Do they have to have been acquired under the FY 2013 outlay? APCs were offloaded yesterday. What if the contract was signed in 2012 and deliveries are just being made? What if they were acquired through extra-budgetary finance? After all, the NNPC funded a contract for 215 gunboats and landing craft in 2008-2009 while the NPA funded the acquisition of an OCEA FPB 98 Mk.II in 2012?

The Navy commissioned a Shaldag and three Manta boats in November and they were delivered to the Navy this year.

Well, the FY 2012 budget only made provision for

– two OPVs

– three OCEA FPB 72 Mk.IIs

– three Shaldag Mk.IIs

– six Manta ASD Mk.IIs

– four helicopters

and nothing more.

Six Manta ASD Littoral Interceptors for which orders were placed in 2012 were commissioned in Dec 2012.

So where did the three units of Manta ASD boats commissioned on Nov 19th, 2013 emanate from if there was no procurement in 2013?

@ Oje, the smaller (ur left) gun is a breda 40mm AAA, if u zoom, midship are 2 cuboids, those should be the otomat Ship-to-ships and aft are a quad pack, those should be the aspides SAMs. I hope I got that right.
As 4 procurement, we just got news of some APC or MRAPs, there may be more we don’t know of.

@ Ifok,thanks for sharing,i would also love to know it’s role it’s been playing and would play in terms of our national defense,also would like to know what’s it’s patrol role is like,thanks for the update plz keep the updates about our flagship coming.

At OGA OJE we have what we call unconfirmed reports of procurement specifically related to the Nigerian ARMY and the Nigerian Air force, We say unconfirmed by way of integrity because we need verifiable proof, However our highly secretive military is not giving anything away but we can glean from the recent comments of the COAS and the CNAF some procurements have been definitely made..

That would be great. When I first heard that name in 1998, he was ECOMOG spokesman in Sierra Leone and a Lieutenant Colonel. As of December 2013, he was a Brigadier General. He has paid his dues and deserves to be elevated.

Yes, it is for real. Brigadier General Olukolade is a now a Major General. Ditto General Atewe of the Presidential Guards Brigade.

A rather familiar-sounding Adamu Jalingo has been promoted to Brigadier General. Could he be the Major Jalingo who alongside the likes of Major Tanko performed absolute heroics for ECOMOG during the Battle of Freetown II (Xmas 1998-New Year 1999)

A bit off topic, here’s an amazing documentary i ran across about the Danish Navy’s Absalon in Somalia. Incredible ship, excellent at Anti-piracy, impressive crew. Its unbelievable how they can switch roles in a short amount of time. Didn’t expect less from descendants of Vikings anyway. 🙂 Its kinda long (6 parts) i only managed to watch 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gslYChaeVOY

No im not talking about arms or vehicles, i’m talking about strategic assets like replacing out front line fighter the Chinese version of a MIG-21. The Nigerian air force operate the most advanced and largest helicopter gunship fleet in the West, Central, East Africa region, why not a comparable fighter squad, and anti air craft missile defense systems and think long term about acquiring submarines for maritime protection. Nigeria is at war, we cannot continue to prosecute a war on terror on a peace time military budget and size.

I stated as much in my last post and rectified that yesterday. We even gave reasons why she can only be the NNS Aradu, not to mention the fact that the person who shot the photo also knows that it is the NNS Aradu.

There is no argument about that. While I was writing the caption, we instinctively and based on recurring practise of reporting on “NNS Thunder F90” we simply imputed the more regularly quoted pennant number on impulse. Not that the superstructures of the NNS Aradu and NNS Thunder look alike.

Pennant numbers do not change in the NN as far as I know and NNS Aradu was clearly the caption. The Aradu is the senior of the two ships should have that reflected in an older pennant number.

@ tim
beegeagle says:
December 11, 2013 at 4:17 pm
This is the NNS Aradu F89. I was
thinking and writing all at the
same time and being so used to
the NNS Thunder (in the absence
of NNS Aradu), I instinctively
typed in “F90″

An error…yes. Not sure you understand the pressure under which I currently operate.

That is the NNS Aradu and the pennant number has never changed – F89. The fact is that “NNS Thunder F90” features so often here that “90” rather than “89” comes naturally after “F” except one is absolutely focused at the time.

Even without the caption on the photo sent to me, I would always know this to be the Aradu from the clutter of armaments on her. The 127mm gun fore is the only one in NN service. The NNS Thunder, all six 58m NN warships and the Mk.9 corvette all carry 76mm guns fore.

@ oga beeg, gd morning sir! Our govt in their wisdom and usual silence have been silent on the Epe missile project, has it been jettisoned due to budgetary provisions or international pressure. Its annoying we don’t know what is happening in our country. Kindly update if u have any sir

@ chucks, an Epe Missile project does not exist, Centre For Space Transport And Propulsion/National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)however has a facility basically dedicated to the acquisition of practical rocketry engineering knowledge. Several armature rockets have been assembled(probably from Academic type CKD from US) and launched here. It is not really a big time research facility dedicated missile or space vehicle development. It is impossible to hid such a facility, you will also have to earmark hundreds on millions of dollars for such a facility and will have to affiliate it to several local universities for modular research purpose and enlist several known international parts suppliers. Moreso, I am not really sure we have the political will to pursue this course of action or that we are even interested in it at all! We are simply still very far away from there. If we are really interested in missile technology acquisition, a nice way to start will be buying a known system in bulk from Russia/China with some CKD assembly clause in the deal, then we can try some reverse engineering with some foreign partners later

@Oga Solarex, Are you %100 sure of this? Then what is at Epe and where did the whole story come about? What was in the picture that was posted here by Beag sometime ago, showing a coastline with some facilities on it? We heard that it’s a top secret program apart from the NASRDA project.

I beg to differ with Oga solorex. You are not entirely correct about the center. The center is run by NASDRA, led by professor P.N okeke, a brilliant nigerian physicist. The aim of the center is to develop propulsion technology which would give nigeria the capacity to deploy her own satellites into orbit from nigeria by year 2020-2025. Now the same technology used to launch satellites into orbit can also be used to launch war-heads. As such the center in essence serves a dual purpose.

@Oga Henry: The center is indeed run by NASDRA and CSTP with laudable objectives like every government project, may be funds and the political will be provided for these objectives later; however, at the moment we have not seen the structures ( Funding affiliation to foreign partners, clearly defined interface with local academia intelligentsia, intergovernmental technology transfer agreement-say with China, Russia, Israel, India, Uk…). The absence of all these makes the center an aspiring tiger on a paper. Rocketry development is a huge process, you needs tens/hundreds of scientist ( not one very brilliant fellow) and hundreds of technicians and a very broad academia base, you have to develop the fuel, materials, combustion control systems, navigation control system, comms and several other sub-systems with separate teams. Carry out thousands of test and procure huge volumes of data from friendly countries before attempting anything concrete.

We had more concrete arrangements with facilities built, agreement s signed, funds provided, but we often get lost when it comes to proper implementation. How much more for this case when the requisite infrastructures are clearly lacking?

My fear is that even with the “will” and say “proper” startup funding we may eventually muddle it up.We had an agreement with German Government to help develop an Indigenous Nigerian Automobile Engine through ANAMCO decades back ( build a huge facility and set up agencies to facilitate the transfer of technology)but we did not have the will to see it through on time till it ran into troubled political waters; We assembled hundreds of Steyr APCs in the past but did not leverage on that to clone it core technology and produce a local tracked APC since then. We have assembled the Air beetle (I think its 1986), yet we have not yet domiciled the competence to design and fabricate simple structured aircraft(not the engine) like its done in Brazil, Iran, Argentina and even Sudan till date.

My point is that for this center not to be destined to fail, we must get the structures very right and there must be a very strong national attitude towards it and deep political commitment-not some secret lab stuffs, it will most likely not crawl, how much more fly. For now I assure you they not yet test firing any rocket missile beyond 2-4km range-not really locally developed.

To think about venturing into Space via indeginously developed rocketry we need to operate and familiorize ourselves with various missile systems. The Nigerian army barely employs its use save a hand few Roland anti air defense missiles. No MLRS, the airforce jets use no air to air missiles, only air to ground ordnance, not sure our Navy fares any better. For a quater the price we are spending on Space research and NASRDA we can incoporate these weapons systems into oour military.

@ Cutievik, sorry I couldn’t get back 2 u earlier. I hope u do know that the Aradu has been pier side for a few yrs and as such couldn’t play any role. However, she did play very significant role in the defense of our maritime territorial integrity bearing in mind that our economy is maritime bound!
Remember that she was inducted in 82 by the Shagari admin when our strategic enemy in Africa was apathied South Africa (and were fearing a SA attack on our oil economy – we supposedly foiled one in Equatorial Guinea) , thus she was aquired with high end combat in mind (with the 5`, otomat, aspides and lynx etc). She’s a general purpose frigate and could in her days tackle surface, sub and air treats. Her capability also included amphibious ops support (which it did extensively in Sierra Leone until she suffered engine failure and departed for Nigeria on one engine), EW and S & R. In fact regarding the later, I remember reading that she was in the Guinness book of record for carrying out the fastest recorded rescue of a man overboard.
Secondly, she ‘was’ our flagship (for now perhaps, the Thunder is carrying on in her place) and as such lead in a taskforce like she did in SL. She has capacity to C&C other vessels with her radar and comm.
3rdly, her role include diplomacy as she was tasked with ‘showing the flag’ and this she did with distinction. Had she been in shape, perhaps she would have made the Australian trip and not the Thunder. She was the pride of the Nigerian navy, the most modern ship in Africa! She was a true blue water vessel and took part in several exercise and navy celebration (eg UK and Brazil).
As for future roles, if the gov caves into the voice of reason, they would restore and upgrade her and add a few ships of similar capacity (say the German F122s) while we plan for a capable replacement. That way, we still have men and women capable of operating and maintaining a modern fighting vessel.